


you're a painting of a saint

by Cirkne



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Nobody is Dead, Polyamory, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21824932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirkne/pseuds/Cirkne
Summary: There’s no love like theirs.After defeating Pennywise, Richie confesses that he's in love with Eddie and Stanley but they have their old lives to return to.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Stanley Uris, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Comments: 11
Kudos: 51





	1. Stanley

Richie tells them he’s in love with them while they’re taking Eddie to the hospital. It should be a turning point, but it gets lost in the mess of things. Stanley holds Richie’s hands because he doesn’t know where to keep his own. Eddie’s gone quiet, which scares him more than anything. The last time they had to carry him out, he had been screaming. Back then, of course, Stanley ended up running away from them. There’s nowhere to run this time and there’s no more screaming. It’s them, and the road, and Eddie’s blood in Ben’s car. He keeps thinking about how it’s a rental and Ben will have to explain the stains. Because they’ve always worked that way, because even after 27 years it’s still Eddie and him sticking together, he knows Eddie is thinking the same thing. 

Richie says it again, over the sound of the machines Eddie’s connected to. It still doesn’t mean anything. It will change if Eddie dies. They cannot be torn or pulled apart. They cannot be six, or five, or four. If it’s not all of them, then it’s not them.

In the waiting room, Ben gets everyone coffee. Stanley feels that if he’ll drink it he’ll throw it all up immediately but it’s nice to hold something warm in his hands. He doesn’t think about the cold, yet still beating heart of the fucking clown and he doesn’t think about running after Richie to convince him to stay. He’d almost ripped Richie’s stupid shirt. So he doesn’t think about it or about Eddie dying. He doesn’t think about-

He doesn’t think. Richie bumps their knees together like he knows Stanley is spiraling. He always used to, anyway. Back then he’d distract him in the worst ways. He almost wishes, now, that Richie would try to land one of his shitty jokes again, just to convince Stanley that nothing has changed. But it has, of course it has, it’s amazing that Richie’s managed to stop shaking.

They’re catching each other up on their lives. Everything they forgot to mention in the restaurant. He’s always hated hospitals. How nothing ever goes quiet, or stops. And they refuse to stop talking, too. Like a pause would make them have to admit what they’re really here for. If Eddie-

Anyway. They’re catching each other up on their lives and then, of course, their lives catch up to them. Or to him, at least.

He leaves first, just a day after Eddie’s been admitted. Not because he wants to, or can even really fathom being ripped away from them now, after they’re finally close enough for him to touch, but because Patty goes all the way to Maine to get him. If you had asked him a month ago, he would have told you that it felt like he has loved her his entire life. Now, when the parts that came before her have clawed their way back to the top, he has to admit to himself that they’re the ones he has always loved, or will always love. It’s different. It’s overcoming. Patty’s the best thing to happen to him but the losers make up the foundation of his world. They’re the ground he walks on and the dirt he will return to in death. 

He sleeps on the flight and then on the car ride home. She asks him if he’s okay but not about what happened. She’s known him since they were in college, longer than anyone that isn’t family but still not as well as the losers. Half asleep, he dreams of her in the sewers with them and wishes, selfishly, that she had been there so he wouldn’t have to try and fail to explain this to her. 

She had always assumed that the fear he has carried his entire life was instilled in him by his father. And he, although he knew it somewhere deep not to be the truth, not to be the whole truth, anyway, had believed her. 

“Stanley,” she says when they’re parked in their driveway. She sounds tired but unbelievably gentle with him, like she knows. Her words are rose petals. Her hands are made of lemongrass. “I can’t carry you home.”

So they walk back into the house. When she asks about his bags, he tells her to leave them in the car. They’re mostly empty by now, anyway. He couldn’t stand the idea of washing blood out of his clothes again, so he threw them out. Back then, he had watched the washing machine spin not only his shirt but his soul, too. He doesn’t remember the blood ever leaving. He thinks of the colour red. Swirling, consuming, covering his body.

She’s cleaned since he left. She’s left the jigsaw untouched, like he could go back to it, like this hasn’t changed everything he ever thought he knew. He found the missing pieces but the image has changed. The birds are no longer singing. They no longer have wings.

He calls Beverly to ask about it because if he hears Richie’s voice now, he’s going to breakdown. Eddie’s alive but not yet awake which is how Stanley feels, too. His hands are shaking. He gets in the bath with his clothes still on. He wonders what drowning would feel like. His body weighs him down. His skin isn’t his. 

“Patty,” he says when she comes in to check on him. He feels like he’s seeing her for the first time. She’s the most beautiful woman he has ever met. She’s the embodiment of bluet flowers. Her skin is silk, her tears are diamonds, her hands are a cage for his heart. The birds no longer have wings. He could never love someone the way he loves her but he could never love her the way he loves them. 

“Baby,” he says. Darling. He calls her a dove, he calls her sunshine, sweetheart. She tells him to go to bed. She helps him take off the wet clothes. She dries his hair with a towel, she holds his face in her hands and examines it. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for, or what she finds, but she sleeps on the couch until it’s two am and he has to ask her to come back to him because he’s still awake and she’s all he has, or has ever wanted to have. 

So he holds her in his arms and feels like she is holding him together. And tomorrow, he knows, he will have to tell her that he no longer is and will never again be the man she married and hope that she decides to keep him anyway.

He dreams of her again, but he’s a kid this time. He is riding his bike, the losers in front of him and she is standing on the pavement. She looks the same as the day he met her: her hair, like waves, falling on her shoulders, her cheeks pink, her sweater blue. If she spoke to him, she’d sound like a nightingale. He’s loved her ever since. He stops his bike. He wants to ask her to go with them but he doesn’t have the words. How do you explain something like this? How do you open the door for someone else, and push them in, and expect them to know how to deal with it? How did he deal with it?

He makes her breakfast. He puts sugar in her coffee which she usually doesn’t have, because they’ve been trying to eat healthier, both of them, per his request. She eats, and watches him push around the food on his own plate. 

“You were in a hospital when I picked you up,” she says, like she’s trying to make sense of things, or she’s trying to help him make sense of things. It’s all the same. “Are you worried?”

“Eddie’s going to be fine,” he tells her instead of really answering. “We did everything right. And he’s a fighter,” he’s always been a fighter, Stanley wants to add, but talking about their childhood might make him start crying.

“You said his name in your sleep,” she says. It should sound accusatory but it doesn’t. She’s looking right at him. He’s always had a thing for brown eyes. He used to dream of them back then, too. In college he convinced himself that he was always dreaming of her.

“He’s my first love,” he admits because she deserves to know. If you push him on it, it might have been Richie first, but it was both of them, then, and it’s still both of them now so it doesn’t matter. She frowns, a little, like she’s trying to figure him, or this, out.

“You should have stayed with him,” it sounds sad, almost, like she feels bad for him. She’s never known him to love anyone but her. The guilt, he knows, will crash into his body the moment he finds out that Eddie is safe. Until then, he can hardly feel anything that isn’t love for him. 

He wants to tell her that seeing her in Derry had felt like a breath of fresh air. That she made him realize, not for the first time, that there were good things in the world, that not everyone was ruined, or rotten, not everyone started out only with bad parts and worked their way up to some good ones. That she was pure, and holy, that maybe the losers were the universe but she was home and he had wanted to go home, finally. Instead, of course, he says:

“I should have,” because she knows better than him. When she doesn’t answer, he adds: “I love you.”

She slides her fingers around his hand and squeezes. “I love you,” she echoes. It’s a promise, he knows, it’s as good as their wedding rings, or better.

He tells her as much as he can, after. That something bad happened when he was a kid, that they were there, that they followed Bill until they were in too deep, that he had blocked most of it out but it’s been coming back to him since Mike called. She listens to everything he can give her and doesn’t ask for the parts he struggles with. 

When he finally tells her about Eddie and Richie, how he loved them then and how he loves them now, still, she laces their fingers together, meets his gaze. She knows how important this is and for a moment he cannot tell if the affection in his chest blooms for her or them, doesn’t know if it matters, now. 

Later, once he’s given her everything he could, they’re sitting on the couch in the living room, his arm around her waist and her back against his chest. She makes him text Richie the _I love you_ he never returned because he’s too tired, or scared, to call. Richie doesn’t answer but that’s only fair. None of it will mean anything until Eddie wakes up, anyway.


	2. Richie

He’s never seen Patricia Uris before but he recognizes her the moment she steps into the waiting room. Her face lights up when she sees Stanley, like she’s waited for him her entire life. Richie thinks, vaguely that he knows that feeling and then Stanley is standing up from beside him, crossing the room to her. Since he was twelve, or since his memories have been flooding back, at least, Richie’s been convinced that there’s no love like theirs. That the losers are connected in a way that no one has ever been connected but he watches the way Stanley takes Patty into his arms. Like she is something precious, like his body was made to fit hers. And he watches the way she pulls him to herself, like he’s the air in her lungs. 

“I missed you,” she says, just loud enough for them to hear. Stanley’s only been here for a few days.

The love confession Richie’s carried with himself his entire life now feels inappropriate. Ugly. How dare he think that his feelings for them deserve to be turned into words. Stanley and Patty, together, create light. They’re a sunrise, they paint everything gold. Richie shrinks in his chair, afraid that they’ll see him and he will ruin everything just by existing. His body feels cold where Stanley was touching it just moments ago. He rips his gaze away from them to see the others watching them with the same awe he feels. Ben and Beverly are holding hands. If anyone could come close to their love, it’s them. Not Richie. Never Richie. His love has been dirty since before he could even call it love. Had Stanley reacted when he said it? He hadn’t stopped looking at Eddie to check. Back then, of course, it didn’t matter whether they said it back. 

*

Stanley doesn’t introduce them to her. They all know who she is but aren’t allowed to touch her. She shouldn’t even be in Derry. Their bodies are made of pain, it makes sense that Stanley wouldn’t want that pain to reach her. So he makes her wait for him in the car and kneels in front of Richie, his jeans on the disgusting floor of the hospital, a testament to how far they’ve come since they were kids, Richie’s face in Stanley’s hands. 

He’s said his goodbyes to all of them, he’s said _you understand, right?_ like any of them could blame him for wanting to return home. God, Richie would want to return home if he felt like he had one. He belongs here, worrying over Eddie. He’ll stay after every single one of them has left, he’ll turn to dust in this fucking chair if he has to.

“I’m sorry,” Stanley tells him, forcing Richie to look at him. His eyes are endless. He’s made out of clouds and wind, he’s so beautiful and he’s going home with his wife. Richie fights down the urge to kiss him and doesn’t ask what he’s sorry for. He can figure it out on his own. Stanley was not made to love him back.

*

He doesn’t follow him out to the parking lot to watch him drive away or beg him to stay but he goes there right after, drags Beverly with him. She has always been special. She’s always known when to laugh at his jokes and when to give him shit for them. She’s braver than all of them combined, she’s the reason they survived back then. She offers him a cigarette before he has the chance to ask for one. 

“So,” she says, lighting it for him. “You’re in love with them.” 

He thinks about saying: they’re married, they’re both fucking married and it doesn’t matter how I feel or how I felt when we were kids because they both have someone to return to and Eddie just had surgery, fuck, he’s not even awake yet, he almost fucking died protecting me, or us, or himself, whatever, fuck, the point is that we don’t even know if he’ll wake up and Stanley left with his beautiful wife so why does it matter how I feel?

Instead, of course, he nods and then pulls her to sit next to him on the sidewalk, rests his head on her shoulder because for once in his life he doesn’t feel like he can say anything. 

He hasn’t smoked in so long it tastes foul but if it gives him a reason not to go back there, where everything is white and freakishly noisy and quiet at the same time, he’ll smoke the entire pack. Not that Beverly would let him. He breathes out. His glasses got cracked at some point. It’s a stupid thing to focus on but everything else feels too much for him. 

“You think my insurance is gonna cover a fight with a clown?” he asks and feels pain escaping his chest when Beverly bursts out laughing. Because he’s still leaning against her, he feels her laughter with his entire body. 

*

He tries to convince them to let him stay in the hospital but they drag him out despite him calling every single one of them assholes as they do it. 

Mike sits with him in his hotel room and watches him rummage his things for sleeping pills. Ironically, or not at all, Eddie and he ended up getting the rooms next to each other. He’s painfully aware of how empty Eddie’s room is the entire time that he’s getting ready to sleep. 

“If I pick the lock I can wear his clothes,” he tells Mike, not looking at him because he’s afraid of the pity he’d see in Mike’s eyes. 

“And what will you tell him when he wakes up?” Mike asks like that’s the only problem with his plan. Explaining it.

“That I’m in love with him and I’m going crazy because he’s trying to die on me and Stanley already left and what happens when he wakes up and leaves too?” When he turns, Mike looks more amused than sad because of how pathetic Richie sounds, like this is a routine, like none of it is as scary as Richie thinks it is. In an awful, selfish way it makes him feel better. Mike’s spent years storing their collective fear in his body and he finally gets to let go of it. _They won. _He knows they won, he knows everything there is to know about them and so he knows Eddie will wake up, he’s sure of it. All the other stuff will soon stop being important. They made it. Richie feels like crying. They’re alive.__

__“Are you staying with me the entire night?” he asks because he can’t stand the silence. “‘Cause if you are, you have to be big spoon.”_ _

__Mike snorts, throws a pillow at his face. Richie fails to catch it and then pretends he wasn’t trying to in the first place._ _

__*_ _

__That night he dreams of a vending machine where Stanley and Eddie are sitting, motionless, between bags of pretzels and kitkat bars. He has no change in his pockets and by the time he’s finished running around the hospital collecting every penny he could find, someone’s already bought both of them. He wakes up terrified he’s lost them forever and doesn’t feel any better about it once he realizes it was a dream. Mike’s arm is heavy around him, though and his breathing lulls Richie back to sleep._ _

__*_ _

__He doesn’t know when they fucking called her but he should have known they would. She looks exactly like Sonia, or at least similar enough to make him feel like he’s thirteen and in trouble again. She keeps saying _My Eddie_ like he fucking belongs to her. Bill pulls her away to explain everything, or, more accurately, lie out of his ass, before Richie can physically attack her. He wonders what’s so different about Myra, why this jealousy had not filled his body when Patty showed up. _ _

__He knows what it is, really, he felt Eddie radiating anxiety every single time he brought her up when Stanley had talked about Patty like she hung up the stars. He’s always been protective of Eddie in a childish way that Eddie would give him shit for if he knew. Back when they were kids, he’d find Eddie in every room, follow him before he even knew where the others were going. He used to pick fights with him just to hear his voice, pull on his shirt just to be able to touch him. He doubts Myra has ever wanted to worship Eddie the way he does. He wants to build him a shrine out of his words, he wants to turn his body into a temple. He has loved him his entire life, with everything he has and she’s the one that gets to call him hers._ _

__He follows Ben to the vending machines. To complain to him or cry on his shoulder. It’s all the same, really, he just wants someone who understands. He says:_ _

__“Was there ever anyone else?” because in retrospect, now, he can’t even remember the faces of the people he’s dated. None of them ever mattered, none of them came close to being enough. If he thinks about, if he has enough courage to admit it to himself, they all looked like distorted versions of either Eddie or Stanley. They were all replacements for something he had lost, something he didn’t remember ever having._ _

__“No one like her,” Ben answers. He’s smiling, he looks so stupidly lovestruck that Richie wants to hate him for getting the girl and for getting hot, really, for doing better than Richie. Ben had shown up the same boy he had been back then. Gentle like no one else, unbelievably caring. He’s made a living of building houses and he has created a home for Beverly in his chest. His hands were made to nurture and create, his heart was made to be exposed._ _

__“I hate you,” Richie says because he can’t think of anything else and Ben grins, pulls him into a hug. It takes him a moment to realize it but he’s crying, pressed against Ben, holding onto him like he might crumble if he lets go._ _

__*_ _

__He's sick of hospital coffee so when Bill offers they drive to get something better, as an obvious ploy to get him away from Myra who has decided she’d rather sit and talk to them in the waiting room even though she’s the only one actually allowed to be in the room with Eddie, Richie agrees. Myra hasn’t yet caught up to the fact that he loathes her almost as much as he loathed Henry. He knows he’ll feel guilty about it the moment Eddie wakes up but for now he allows himself childish pettiness and makes jokes she won’t understand just to see her confused face when the losers offer chuckles in return._ _

__Bill doesn’t call him on it but he would if he wasn’t afraid Richie would crumble. They’re waiting for their order when Richie says it._ _

__“You’re not wearing your wedding ring,” he knows this because he counted them back in the restaurant. Stanley, Eddie and Bill, and then the rest of them, though he could see the tan line on Beverly’s finger, still. That part wasn’t as important to him. Maybe to Ben. It doesn’t matter now._ _

__“I kissed Bev,” Bill answers. It reminds Richie of back then, Bill had told him back then too. Actually, when he thinks about it, Beverly told him first because she always did. This part doesn’t matter either. He gives Bill a look and earns a sigh. “Audra and I have been one bad fight away from separating for like a year now.”_ _

__There are jokes Richie could make and there are more serious, sincere things he could say._ _

__“That sucks,” he offers in an attempt at a middle ground and Bill smiles at him like he knows everything Richie is trying to pack into that sentence._ _

__His phone buzzes while he’s carrying a tray of coffee to the car. Later, he will check it to see that Stanley has texted him the three words he’s wanted to hear since they were kids. But this will come after he’s spent a minute trying to balance all of the cups on his lap in the passenger seat, after Bill’s phone has lit up with Mike’s name, after he’s answered it for Bill to find out that Eddie is finally awake. By then, texting Stanley back will seem pointless._ _

**Author's Note:**

> this is my most self indulgent fic to date. streddie and stanpat rights forever 
> 
> im @ tadaffodil on twitter if u care 
> 
> title from you in january by the wonder years


End file.
